New ‘Ghostbusters’ Ads Won’t Make Haters Any Happier

Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters has had an interesting journey leading up to its July 15th release. The new movie that seeks to reimagine the 80s classics has been quite divisive, with a vocal minority venting their anger about the all-female leads. However, the bigger problem from a box office perspective has been the film’s marketing: it’s just not selling the talent, both behind the camera and in front of it, in a convincing way. With Feig directing the combined efforts of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon, I have no doubt that the film will have more than its fair share of laughs, but early looks at the movie – like today’s two new TV spots – are not doing it any favors.

To be fair, most 30-second commercials for feature-length comedies aren’t that funny to begin with; they’re attempts at boiling down the film’s characters and humor into out-of-context one-liners by folks who are wholly outside of the movie’s actual production. Ghostbusters suffers from this same predicament, though my fingers are still firmly crossed that the ads aren’t representative of the film overall. As much as I love seeing the Focused, Non-Terminal, Repeating Phantasm, a.k.a. the Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor known as “Slimer,” the introduction of a Lady Slimer is … unfortunate.

Check out the new Ghostbusters ads below:

And for more on Ghostbusters, take a look at some of our recent coverage:

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